Gym & Remembrance

Today was my first day back at the gym since my infection surgery at the beginning of August – and I’d been away for most of the five months before that as I healed from the plastic surgery. Although I’ve been walking, it hasn’t been much and certainly not up to pre-surgery activity.

So we started again, my trainer and I. Because I still have the open wound (yes, after 7 weeks it is still open, though greatly healed), today was more about movement and not lots of weight or pulling motions such as lat pull downs which could pull on my wounded area. I doubt I’ll be sore tomorrow, usually my clue about how well I worked my body, but it did feel good.

It’s scary to see how easy it is to gain weight back. Oh, I’ve done it lots of times before (it’s my pattern) but I don’t like watching the scale and the way it has been nudging up a few pounds. I know what to do to turn it around but have lacked the focus to actually do it – and all of this time away from regular exercise has not helped. So it was particularly important that I had the appointment today, to get back on track.

On the other hand, it was definitely NOT good to be in the gym on 9/11 with memorials and interviews and related movies showing on every on-screen channel. I was on the treadmill ten years ago in my Boston gym, watching as the planes hit the towers on one screen with Top Gun air fights on the next screen over. It looked as though we were watching military scrambling to go after the people who struck the towers. Unsettling and vivid.

I have only watched one of the myriad 9/11 shows this week. I overloaded on all the coverage 10 years ago and cannot watch now. I remember it all without seeing it again. The one I did see was about baseball and the role it played for New York in the days, weeks, and months after the towers fell. HGTV has been playing most of this weekend when the TV has been on.

At least we had power. After Irene came through, almost 70% of Connecticut was without power for at least some time, including many of my staff. My director’s house had major structural damage from a big tree crashing into the roof. Roads were closed from flooding all over the state. Schools ended up using “snow days” before the doors even opened for the year, due to power outages, flooding, and/or damage.

But I was fine here, other than leaking windows and losing cable for 8 hours (and with it, my internet and phone). I have a good supply of lanterns and batteries, and those will come in handy later in the year when the warning is to prepare for a blizzard.

2 thoughts on “Gym & Remembrance”

I have been avoiding TV because I feel like most of the “remembrance” coverage is exploitative. I don’t need to see the terrible footage over and over. If a dear relative of mine was murdered, I would not watch a film of the death over and over. I think the important question, the one few people ask, is ” where do we go from here?”

What Jen said. Also, my husband pointed out that we’re memorializing what Bin Laden did to us. We don’t feel safer, we’re on guard, we’ve lost so much, tangible and intangible. I couldn’t watch any of it and I’m glad it’s September 12th.